


you can get what you want or you can just get old

by monsterandmana



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Canon Compliant, Dialogue Heavy, Fix-It, Gen, I know nothing about cars, Sibling Bonding, i use the word serious a lot, lance and veronica talk in the car, lance opens up about his insecurities, set during episode 10, they talk about lance's crush on keith
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-19
Updated: 2018-08-19
Packaged: 2019-06-26 09:31:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,325
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15660480
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/monsterandmana/pseuds/monsterandmana
Summary: Being in the car with his sister after so long brings Lance back to being a kid, back when Veronica had just passed her driving test and promised to take him to McDonald’s for her first proper drive as a legal driver. He can remember sitting shotgun, all of his concentration focused on keeping the drinks upright that sat on his lap.Lance wishes, wishes, that he was in Cuba in the car with Veronica right now.But he’s not.He’s in a car with Veronica on the way to a Galra base, to potentially sacrifice himself one more time for the sake of the Earth, again, again again.





	you can get what you want or you can just get old

**Author's Note:**

> title is from the song Vienna by Billy Joel
> 
> Lance and Veronica mustve had loads of time when they were driving to that galra base so i started thinking i wonder what they were talking about and then i wrote this lmao
> 
> if this doesnt make sense in where it fits in within the plot of the episode, fuck voltron canon i dont have it in me to watch a season more than once
> 
> also i cant drive so i know nothing about cars! thats why i dont include anything about them!
> 
> enjoy!xx

Being in the car with his sister after so long brings Lance back to being a kid, back when Veronica had just passed her driving test and promised to take him to McDonald’s for her first proper drive as a legal driver. He can remember sitting shotgun, all of his concentration focused on keeping the drinks upright that sat on his lap. He can remember going on with long drives with Marco and Luis and Veronica, with Marco and Veronica arguing over music whilst Luis and little Leandro ignoring them and playing eye spy with only the sea and the sky to look at.

Lance wishes, _wishes_ , that he was in Cuba in the car with Veronica right now. But he’s not.  
He’s in a car with Veronica on the way to a Galra base, to potentially sacrifice himself one more time for the sake of the Earth, again, again, again.

He’s so tired.  
This car ride, there’s no music and there’s no bickering older brothers. It’s too serious, Veronica is too serious, the pressure to survive is too serious.  
It’s a four-hour drive to the Galra base. He doesn’t have to contact Red until the last hour of the journey. He could go to sleep, refresh himself, but Veronica wouldn’t let him anyway. Needs to stay alert or something.  
Lance readjusts himself, props one leg up onto the car seat and rests his elbow on the window and leans his head on his hand. He’s drumming his fingers into his thigh.

Veronica briefly looks over at him, then turns her focus back to the road.  
  
“Are you okay?” she asks. “We’ve been in the car half an hour and you’ve normally bitten my ear off by now.”  
  
“I’m fine,” he replies. “I’m just tired.”  
  
“Are you sure? Because when you’re tired you’re usually pretty restless. You’re as still as a statue.”  
  
“I’m fine, okay! Will you just drop it?” he says sharply.

Then,  
“That was harsh. I’m sorry.”

Veronica shakes her head. “I get it. We’ve got a serious mission ahead of us. It’s a lot to think about. But, we’ve got time to kill, so if you want to talk I’m all ears. Okay?”

“I know. Thanks, Veronica.”

 

***

 

One hour fifteen minutes in. They’ve so far been undetected and just gotten confirmation that the rest of the Paladins have taken flight to the other bases. Lance needs to start psyching himself up, get in the zone, feel the connection with Red. However, it feels like there’s something stopping him from concentrating. That’s a lie. He knows what’s stopping him.  
Veronica appears to be a mind reader.

“Is it Allura? Is that what’s bothering you?”

He snaps out of his thoughts.

“What?”

“Allura,” Veronica says. “She said something to you and then I teased you about it afterwards. Is that what’s bothering you?”

He sighs. “It’s one of the things.”

“Do you want to talk about it?” she asks. “It’s clearly eating you up, and I think you need to be level-headed for later on. I won’t laugh or anything. Pinky promise.”

Like he knew she would, Veronica extends her pinky finger out to Lance. He smiles and then links his pinky finger.

“Coran and Allura were the first people that we met in space, right? And when I first met her, I thought that she was the prettiest girl I’d ever met. She still is. Anyway, I knew that I was crushing on her hard, and I knew that she didn’t feel the same way, so I started to see her more as a friend. And I was fine with it. I think I was starting to move on. And then she says this and now I don’t really know what to think.”

Veronica doesn’t say anything for a few seconds. “But if you’ve moved on, it shouldn’t be a problem, right?”

“I know. But now I just feel ba-”

“Leandro,” Veronica interrupts. “If you go out with Allura because you feel bad about getting over a crush then that’s not fair on her. It’s better if you tell her how you feel.”

“Yeah. Yeah, you’re right. I still love her as a friend, though.”

“You seem pretty good friends. And hey, maybe, she just wants to be your friend too. You don’t know until you ask her, right?”

Lance hums in agreement. He turns to look out of the window. Nothing but dirt and ruins. It’s hard to tell the difference between the dirt and rubble. This makes him so angry. He wanted to come home to a safe, untouched Earth. To reunite with his family and never be apart from him again. It’s the Galra’s fault, he knows, but a part of him blames the Garrison for not having the right defences and not telling people about an upcoming attack on their planet and

“Is it someone else? Did you get a crush on someone else? Because, before. I mean, you hopeless romantic, you’ve always got a crush on someone.”

Lance’s eyebrows shoot upwards. He’s so happy his face is turned, he can feel his face heating up and if Veronica saw-

“Lance. Your ears are a different colour to your neck. You can’t hide anything from me.”

He sighs but doesn’t turn around.

“I guess?” He says. “But that’s just as complicated.”

“Who is it? Did you meet an alien that’s now lightyears away and you don’t know if you’ll ever see her again?”

“It’s Keith.”

“Keith?” Veronica repeats.

“Yes, Keith,” He says. “Ronnie, I came out when I was-”

“I know, that’s not what I meant. It’s just. Keith seems very serious and you’re, no offence baby brother, but you’re not as serious as him?”

“Keith wasn’t always this serious. He’s actually a big nerd and makes my heart go all fluttery whenever he says something nerdy. Ronnie, he didn’t give Cosmo a name because he thought that he would tell him when he’s ready. He looked after Cosmo for like two years. That’s so cute.”

Veronica smiles at him, and when he turns to look at her, she has a twinkle in her eye. It very suddenly feels like back before any of this started, being in the car with Veronica, and telling her about the boys that smiled at him and the girls that were kind to him.

“Why is he so serious now, then?” she asks him.

And Lance tells her about the Blade of Marmora, Keith leaving, and Keith coming back with his mother and a wolf. And Veronica listens to him, doesn’t laugh, and doesn’t interrupt him.

“He left, and hardly kept in contact with you guys? That’s pretty shitty of him,” she says.

“You don’t need to tell me twice,” Lance replies. He scratches his leg.

“Have you not told him how you feel?” Veronica asks.

She is right, he hasn’t, but Lance laughs anyway. “No way. I’ve not had the time to talk to him about something other than the mission back to Earth. I’ve never been able to catch him alone.”

“What about that time you were floating in space? Did you not have the time to talk then?”

Lance snorts. “Could you imagine that? Surrounded by everyone there? ‘Uh, hey Keith, there’s something I need to tell you. I’ve had a huge crush on you ever since you cradled me in your arms?’ I would’ve rather floated away into space.”

Veronica laughs for a good few seconds. Lance had missed his sister’s laugh so much. It makes him want to cry.

“Float away into space instead of facing your problems. I love it. Wait, did you say Keith cradled you in his arms?”

 

***

 

Two hours and thirty-seven minutes in. The atmosphere feels much more comfortable now. Lance tells Veronica about Keith and Veronica jokingly teases him back. They had broken into a comfortable silence when Veronica breaks it.

“Can I ask you another question? Sorry, I feel like I’ve been asking a lot.”

“No, go ahead. I get that you have loads.”

“Did you get lonely up in space?”

Lance is stumped for words. It’s hard to make him speechless. He’d never spoken about his insecurities up in space to anyone other than Laika. He never felt he could.Not dealing with them lead to drawing himself away and spending more time with Red and the mice and Kaltenecker. He knew that he was making himself lonely, and he kept on doing it.

“I’m sorry,” Veronica says quietly, “That was insensitive of me to ask. But I worry okay? You're my baby brother. I have to worry about you. We all did. I know what you’re like and I know that you’ll isolate yourself.”

“It was. I was,” Lance says. He’s looking at the road ahead. He can feel his eyes watering and he knows that if he looks at his sister, he’s going to cry.

“I wasn’t lonely at first. We were all thrust into this situation that was out of our control and we had no choice but to stick together. And then, when that all settled down, we kinda just split into our own little groups, right? And since Pidge and Hunk are on the same wavelength for techy and engineering that they sort of just. Grouped up together and would spend days playing with all the Altean technology.  
Allura and Shiro were off planning the coalition and coming up with plans to defeat the Galra, so me and Keith just sort of gravitated toward each other, you know? Neither of us understood Pidge and Hunk half of the time and we always needed a breather from coalition stuff.  
Like me and Keith would train, we would play video games, and we would sit and watch the stars. And then he leaves, and I feel like I’m stranded or something. I know I’m too dumb to understand Altean technology and when he left I was clashing with Shiro too much to sit in with him and Allura and Lotor. So I ended up spending my days off with Kaltenecker and my nights in my room playing video games. Veronica, I got so fucking lonely.”

It’s now that Lance looks over at his sister. Veronica, still looking straight ahead, has tears on her face. She’s blinking a lot, trying to stop them from falling, but it doesn’t work. She wipes her eyes from underneath her glasses then turns to look at Lance.  
Lance loves his sister. He loves her so much and it pains him to see her cry. Veronica has never been much of a crier, and when she does it’s always enough for the rest of the family to start. Lance has the sudden urge to take the wheel, turn the car around, and drive home. He has always been so protective of his older siblings, and now he can’t help but feel that this is all his fault. It’s his fault that the Galra invaded Earth, it’s his fault they have to fight them one last time, it’s his fault that he’s made his big sister cry.

With his own voice breaking, he says: “Ronnie, don’t cry.”

Veronica extends a hand out to Lance, and Lance takes it. Their hands are joined for a few moments before Veronica places both back on the wheel. She exhales.  
“We, we didn’t want you to be lonely. We were so worried that you’d somehow been separated from Hunk and Pidge and you were on your own, on some planet somewhere.” She stops to wipe the tears from her eyes, her nose, her chin. “And, and we thought of you every day, Lance. Every single day. You have to know that not a day goes by where we hadn’t thought of you.”

“I know,” Lance says quietly, “I know.”

“We thought that if, if we all thought of you that you wouldn’t be lonely. As if you would be able to feel all of us,” she points to her heart. “Here.”

“I did,” he says. “I could. I thought of you guys every day. Some days my homesickness was so bad I just wanted to jump in the Red Lion and come home.”

“What stopped you?” Veronica asks.

“It wouldn’t be fair on the team. Even though I felt like a liability half of the time, they wouldn’t be able to form Voltron without me.”  
There had been some days where he was close to doing so. He would make excuses to miss Altean Movie Night and sit in his room, pack up his stuff, and sneak down to Red when everyone had gone to sleep. He’d written letters upon letters saying _I’m sorry, I can’t do this anymore, I need to go home, Voltron is better off without me_ , before deciding to stay. _One more week,_ he would tell himself. One more week turned into two into three into four into five and before he knew it Keith was back and he was back on Earth.

“I’m glad you didn’t,” Veronica says. “Of course we would’ve loved for you to be home earlier, but it’s important to stick together.”

“Yeah,” Lance agrees.

“And Lance? You’re not dumb. Please don’t call yourself that. You’re one of the smartest guys I know.” Veronica says, whilst looking directly at Lance. The expression she wears is what Little Lance used to call “Veronica’s Scary Mode” which was used to stop him from kicking the pews in front of him at Mass or running away from Mom in the supermarket. It worked every time.

“Try saying that when Pidge calls you dumb every single day,” he says bitterly. That’s another reason why he wanted to leave. He knows, deep down, that Pidge is only teasing. But then it crosses the line and gets to the point where he starts to believe it. Yeah, he is. He can’t come up with battle schemes or understand Altean and their vast technology and he’s not very good with names sometimes. But he’s a damned good sharpshooter. And no one on the team is able to do what he can do.

Veronica scoffs. “Oh, don’t listen to her. Seriously, Lance, don’t. You are worth so much more than what she says and what she gets people to think about you.”

Lance feels his ears turn warm, and he smiles down at his shoes. “Thanks, sis.”

Veronica reaches over to ruffle his hair. “I mean it. No problem, bro. Hey, can I tell you something? You have to promise not to tell anyone.”

“I’m all ears,” Lance says with a laugh.

“Speaking of the Holts, I really can’t stand Sam,” she says. “Shit, are the comms on?”  
Lance’s eyes dart to the dashboard.

“Nope,” he replies. They look at each other then start snickering.

“Thank God. Imagine if it was? Think of all the questions he’d ask me in that nasal voice of his. I’d rather surrender to the Galra.”

“Why can’t you stand him?” Lance asks.

Veronica shrugs. “I get bad vibes from him. And he’s so condescending. And he talks in all of this jargon that not even Adam understands, and he’s probably the one person that can since him and Shiro have had so many dinners there. Like, everything has to be his way and doesn’t allow any input from the rest of us. Sure, we haven’t been into space or whatever, but we can still come up with ideas that would benefit? But nope! Doesn’t matter!”

“He was like that when we rescued him,” Lance agrees. “Having him, Pidge and Matt all on the Castle of Lions was intense. I think I just stayed in my room the whole time.”

“Was Keith there?”

“Unfortunately not. But I was talking to him quite a lot on those orange phone things that we have.”

“Oh? You’ve been talking to him? Like talk-talking to him? You didn’t tell me that!” Veronica teases, as she checks the distance on the dashboard. 60 miles left.

Lance groans and he places his head in his hands. “Ronnie, my God. I did not mean it like that.”

Veronica laughs and starts to prod him on the shoulder. “I’m only teasing. As your older sister, it’s my job to tease you. Especially if it’s about crushes. It’s in the contract.”

Lance flicks her hand away. “Marco and Luis don’t tease me anymore.”

“Yeah, well, Luis and Marco are in their _thirties_ and have _children_ that they tease. You’re all mine now.”

As serious as Veronica can be, she has her silly moments. Lance knows that she’s trying to distract him and the situation that’s outside of the car. He’s trying not to notice the wasteland outside. The closer they get to the base, the quieter it seems to get. Any trace of civilisation has been wiped out and replaced by Galran machinery. It doesn’t even look like Earth anymore.

 

***

 

Forty-five minutes left. After getting the go-ahead from Keith, and definitely ignoring Veronica’s teasing glances, Lance has started to contact Red from the prison. And it’s not working. He can’t feel his connection to her. Has she suddenly decided to go back to Keith? Should he be calling out for Blue instead? He doesn’t know. It’s another thing to stress him out.  
Veronica can tell that something’s up by the way she keeps looking at him, but she’s saying anything. Her finger hovers over the comms for a few seconds, before placing her hand back on the wheel.  
After five more minutes of nothing, Lance slams his head back against the headrest and runs a hand down his face. “ _Fuck_.”

“Is everything okay?” Veronica asks.

“I can’t make contact with Red,” Lance admits. “It’s like she’s asleep or something. And now I’m starting to worry she’s gonna to go back to Keith or something.”

Veronica’s eyes flash back toward the comms switch. “Do you want me to switch this on so you can message him?”

Lance shakes his head. “No. I don’t want any of them to worry. Because then we’re screwed, right? We’re screwed, all of us. Us two, the most.”

“Please don’t say that,” Veronica says quietly. It dawns on him then that Veronica is just as, if not more scared, than he is.

“Ronnie, I didn’t mean it,” he says softly. “I’m overreacting. Red probably moves at lightspeed and since we’re still pretty far away from the base, she doesn’t need to come yet. Okay, Ronnie? We’re gonna be okay. We got this.”

Veronica exhales and nods her head. “Okay, okay, okay. Fuck, Lance, I’m really scared.”

“Me too,” he says. “But if we stick together, we can do it, okay? And if we have to fight some Galra soldiers, we have to. Have I mentioned I’m a pretty good sharpshooter?”

She smiles. “Only a couple of times.”

“It’s gonna be fine. And if worst comes to worst, I’m confident Red will sweep in and save the day.”

“You sure?” Veronica asks.

“A hundred per cent. She’s done it before, she’ll do it again.”

Veronica reaches her hand out to Lance again and he takes it. He’s confident about Red. Even if she doesn’t save him, she’ll save his sister.

Lance turns to look at her. “You know what I’d like to do? We’ve saved Earth and are heroes and have our own chocolate frogs?”

Veronica laughs. He wanted her to smile.

“What?” she asks.

“I want to go home, and be in the car with you, Luis, and Marco and go to McDonald’s like when we were kids. I want us all to fight over the music and steal each other’s fries and for the soda to almost go everywhere because I didn’t put the lid on properly.”

Veronica squeezes Lance’s hand, then places it back on the wheel. In the distance, he can see the Galra base, and in the tips of his fingers, he can feel Red waking up.

Veronica says,

“I would like that very much.”

**Author's Note:**

> thank u for reading! :)


End file.
